Annual Goals

Since my school is in Virginia I have to have a SMART goal for my teacher evaluation. This year all elementary counselors in my district are using the first goal above which is a program goal. As education specialists we have some flexibility in our goal. Our district counseling supervisor worked on this goal with our head of teacher evaluation. A few principals did not like it but it got approved. Our teachers all do one directly related to academic achievement and some area and group. We are using Second Step and MindUp as the foundation for our Tier 1 lessons. Teaching 10-15 new lessons is a lot of work but I am happy that finally if a student transfers from one school in our district to another we can assume they have been exposed to lessons on empathy, emotion management, and problem solving. I will meet after the first semester to update my evaluator (principal) on this goal and my final data has to be turned in at the beginning of May.

The School Counseling Program Goals are the ones I developed with my administrator and advisory council. They are the ones in my Annual Agreement my principal and I discussed and signed earlier this month. They are based on data from last year. We had a drop in the number of students who felt our staff listened to them when they reported bullying. We had an increase in the number of students who were absent or tardy more than 10 days. Referrals for anxiety and emotion regulation continues to be the number one reason students are referred for counseling. I will use my attendance goal for my Closing-the-Gap Action Plan and my goal for students needing more help (Tier 2) with emotion regulation for my Small Group Action Plan. The Results Reports for these goals are done in June.

We had a lively discussion of our goals at our October district Elementary Counselors Meeting. I appreciate having an engaged Professional Learning Community to share ideas and strategies face-to-face.